One Night in Ireland
by reader304
Summary: May wishes he was someone else. Ward's life is a web of lies. They're lying in bed together, but they couldn't be farther apart. Two-shot set after "The Well."
1. Chapter 1

Melinda felt chilly, impossibly.

Well, maybe not impossibly. It _was_ November in Ireland. _Improbably_, she thought. The heat was on, she was under a blanket. She _shouldn't_ be cold. _Evaporation_, her sleepy brain knew. _Sweat cools skin._ A warm shower would help, but she didn't feel like getting up. She was tired.

And there was the not-so-small matter of the bed's other occupant, who was apparently sleeping peacefully on his side, wrapped up in most of the covers. Waking him could make things awkward. _Which, clearly, they aren't already_.

He hadn't wanted to cuddle, after. Cuddling might warm her up, but Melinda wouldn't dream of waking him up and _asking_, like some lovestruck schoolgirl trying to win over a distant boyfriend. Melinda had never been that desperate, that she could remember. She shifted and tried to get farther under the covers, instead. She almost jumped when her foot brushed his leg. _Sharing a bed with a casual fling never stops feeling strange._

She was no blushing bride. He was neither her first nor last overnight guest. Any fairytales about needing love before you could have sex or sex leading to love evaporated a long time ago, for her. Had she ever truly believed either, even as a teenager? Certain schoolteachers had at least tried to feed her the party line. Idly, her thoughts drifted to her first man, to her ex-husband . . . no, she couldn't remember whether she'd ever tried to make someone love her in bed. She had loved some of her partners. But they were all in another lifetime.

_Live and learn._ She'd certainly learned a thing or two about love by now, and she knew you couldn't make it by bumping bodies together, even if you tried. No. Love came from fighting together, saving each other, comforting each other in hopelessness, valuing each other. The way she loved Phil. Loved him enough to leave her desk job and go undercover in the field. Loved him enough to not care that he didn't want to kiss her, come to bed with her. _But if he did_, she mused, _he'd probably want to cuddle after_.

It would have been nice if Ward had wanted to cuddle. Warmer, anyway.

She tried to shrug away such thoughts as she turned over to get comfortable. She could see his outline in the faint light from the streetlight outside, now. She couldn't see the scars on his back, but she could remember them. She'd felt them under her fingers and peeked when she straddled him to squeeze his tense shoulder with her teeth. A less jaded woman might have gasped at the sight. Ugly lashes, souvenirs from hell. She could guess what they were from, but hadn't asked. He'd been kind enough not to ask about any of the strange marks that decades of fieldwork had left on her body. Not even the most conspicuous one, a bright pink circle along her bikini line, left by a twisting knife. Possibly he hadn't even noticed.

He hadn't made conversation at all. Hell, he'd barely made eye contact. That was probably the staff's effects showing. Rage, pain, and shame don't encourage intimacy. _Good thing neither of us are looking for that, _she mused as she finally started to drift off. And it was true. Melinda had no complaints about the events of the previous hour. Ward hadn't been selfish, just too broken to care about romance. He'd asked whether he should get a condom, and hadn't pried when she replied "No need." Pillow talk was unnecessary. Overanalyzing the situation would've been silly. The sex was mutually enjoyable, it would help them both relax, and that was what mattered.

But she still wished it wasn't so chilly in this room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello readers! Forgot to do this last time, so: I don't claim to own Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.**

**It was harder getting into Grant's head than May. Let me know what you think in the reviews!**

* * *

Grant waited, gritting his teeth, until May lay still and breathed evenly. Then he turned onto his back and sighed up at the ceiling. He'd never been able to sleep on his side, but after what they'd just done, it had been very important to avoid any position that might seem like an invitation to conversation. The way he was feeling right now made pillow talk seem more painful than getting shot.

_Besides which, what would I say? "Thanks for fucking me, it made the urge to kill someone subside somewhat?" "That was so good that I hardly even remembered the time I tried to drown my baby brother?" "I promise the fact I thought of another woman during that is no reflection on you?" "By the way, I'm part of a Hydra sleeper cell?"_ _Dammit. _As if it wasn't hard enough maintaining his cover without Berserker rage sloshing around inside his skull. He was getting sloppy and it had only been one day. _A few decades_, the Asgardian had said. _Fucking great_.

Now he could add anxiety to the list of emotions he was feeling. He knew he'd just broken S.H.I.E.L.D. regulations _(be a good soldier, stay out of sight)_, ignored his mandate from Garrett _(don't get attached, don't get involved, it's how you survive)_, and quite possibly insulted Skye _(just one drink? maybe I can get a rain check . . .)._ His emotional equilibrium was far too broken to deal with that much fallout. He was going to slip up, get a detail of a story wrong, respond inappropriately to some bit of news, and blow the cover he'd been living every day of his life for the last ten years.

And this was his state of mind after an hour of blowing off steam with (the admittedly quite talented) May. He was so screwed.

_Can I spin this when I report to John?_ _Maybe . . . _May was by far the most observant team member most of the time, but everyone's blind to the people closest to them. _That's why you can't get attached, you fucking moron. _If he could convince her to continue this affair, she'd never see him coming. _If you can even manage to be convincing._

Grant began to relax, just a tiny bit. He could work with the idea of this being another gambit. Heck, most of the women he'd slept with over the years had been part of a mission from S.H.I.E.L.D. or from HYDRA. Piling lies on top of lies wasn't always easy, logistically, but it didn't bother him anymore.

_Except you're a goddamn idiot who can't even follow orders properly._ _And when the hell did you start thinking in Garrett's voice? You're pathetic._

Grant groaned. Could he risk going to sleep? He was physically exhausted, but never liked sleeping in front of other people. Violent memories flooded his mind at that thought, and he was too weak to stop them. He groaned again and desperately tried to think of something else.

And suddenly, now of all times, he was thinking of Skye. _Now you're never going to sleep, stupid._ Well, better to think of her than of-_things I'm NOT thinking about._ He didn't know what it was about her. The world was full of women, but she was the first one to catch his eye in a very long time. She was just so . . . unflappable. Both tough and creative. Had the soul of a fighter, but a gentle side too.

He honestly couldn't say why those thoughts made him suddenly so uncomfortable in May's bed.

Maybe he should've agreed to that drink with her. But no matter how messy things got with May, he knew for sure they'd be worse with her. Skye was a cuddlier, he could just tell. _You can't fake sleeping if you're literally in a woman's arms._ He'd learned _that_ lesson under . . . strangely pleasant circumstances. The woman in question had decided not to rest until he was resting, and things had gotten rather creative. _Farah. She was a lot of fun._

But when she'd finally gotten him too exhausted to stay awake, he had talked in his sleep. He'd spent the next morning desperately trying to make her believe that it was only a strange nightmare, prompted by too much late-night TV, nothing based in personal events at all, no no no, don't ask too many questions about why I was screaming, just LEAVE IT ALONE!

Still, it had briefly been nice to know someone was concerned about his well-being. Sometimes he wondered what had happened to her, after that mission was over. He knew he'd wonder about Skye when this one was. He didn't know if he'd ever be able to stop wondering about her. After all, here he was thinking about her while lying next to someone else. Her eyes, her laugh, her muscles tensing under his hands as they sparred . . .

_It's a weakness. Man up. _Skye had a tender heart, she'd try to open him up, understand him, love him properly. But there were things she couldn't ever see.

_You're better off pretending to be asleep next to May. She won't try to fix you. _He risked a glance in her direction; she was fast asleep. Good. Time to think about his next move. He'd have to play the morning carefully. Slipping out without a word would end things then and there, but staying for breakfast might get them caught. What kind of man did she want to wake up next to?

As he lay there strategizing, he carefully did not think about Farah's arms around him _(ancient history, forget her)_. He tried not to think about May's body, lying next to him in bed _(too distracting, focus on the mission)_. But he couldn't shake the feeling that his arms were too empty, that there should've been a woman in them. A soft woman, a woman who cared about him deeply, a woman who would wrap her arms around his chest and try to get him to go to sleep.

It was a lot of work trying to pretend that he didn't know who that woman was.


End file.
